Jen Johans is a three-time national award-winning writer with over twenty years of experience working as a professional movie critic, historian, & essayist. Since 2020, she has hosted the podcast WATCH WITH JEN, which covers all aspects of cinema with an impressive array of guests, including authors, actors, critics, filmmakers, & others in the arts. One of the 100 most popular film history podcasts according to Apple, the show, which is available on all platforms, was also named one of Vulture’s favorite podcasts in 2022.
FR: First off, I love WATCH WITH JEN. It’s my favorite movie-related show out there. How did the show come about? Do you remember your first show and the subject?
JJ: Thank you so much. I’m honored you enjoy it. It was a wild bit of timing! In late 2019, I began noticing that anytime I recommended an older forgotten or overlooked movie on Twitter, for whatever reason, my posts started to go viral & people were asking about more films they might’ve missed. By then, I’d been writing about movies since 2005 or so & was getting burned out by the practice of traditional film criticism so I welcomed the idea of talking about movies in a new way but I didn’t want to be a YouTuber because back then I wasn’t super comfortable onscreen. Instead, I thought that it might be a cool approach to create a short weekly Patreon podcast where each week I would introduce listeners to 5 films from various genres that I thought they’d enjoy. Of course, I had no idea what I was doing! Originally, I recorded the shows by speaking directly into my Android phone without a microphone & then had to figure out how to edit & upload the audio file on my desktop by trial & error so I shudder to think what those first season episodes sounded like! This was in early 2020, so ironically, Watch With Jen kicked off only a few weeks before lockdown. Then, with so many people at home, bored, searching for distraction, & struggling to find new ways to connect, I eventually created a spinoff—what I dubbed the “acoustic version” of my solo pod—that I called Watch With Jen & Friends where I spoke with writers & cinephiles about anything under the sun. I initially asked colleagues & buddies to join me so SHE RIDES SHOTGUN author Jordan Harper was my very first guest on that incarnation of the show & it was a cool way to get to “see” people who lived in other parts of the world & we became better friends. Again, maybe because of the pandemic, everyone eagerly said, “yes!” However, by season 2, running 2 different podcasts under the same Watch With Jen banner had gotten way too unwieldy, complex, & confusing so I merged them into 1 show & built the structure where invited guests suggest a theme they’re passionate about & 3-5 movies that we’d both view ahead of time to discuss & that’s what we’ve gone with ever since. I first got the idea for the format in an episode I did with the brilliant Vulture television critic Roxana Hadadi on the filmography of writer-director Sofia Coppola. We covered every single one of Coppola’s movies; the episode was feature-length & I felt like this contemplative research-filled deep dive approach dedicated to a set topic was much more worthwhile for listeners than just following our random trains of thought as I asked guests about everything from film to writing to say, their favorite frozen pizza or nail polish (as fun as that is).
FR: Like a lot of folks nowadays, I discovered you through social media and friends. And of course, I discovered the show first before I knew you were an award-winning writer. How is it different, from the media aspect, to do a show about movies & writing about them?
JJ: Ah, that’s a great question. As I mentioned before, I’d written more than 2,500 reviews in nearly 15 years by the time I started the podcast & by that point, I’d gotten really tired of standard film criticism. I’ve never been one of those critics who could just go to a festival to see & write about 6 films in a single day. (Part of the reason for this, I think, is because initially, I worked for film festivals as a side hustle writing grants, working as the volunteer supervisor, & crafting film summaries for program guides.) I fell in love with film essay writing accidentally in college; I was given a humanities scholarship out of the blue for writing my thesis on Steven Soderbergh’s SEX, LIES, & VIDEOTAPE & realized that’s the kind of thing I wanted to write most instead of just 4 paragraphs telling people to see or stay away from a Marvel movie or something. Unfortunately, there’s not really a market for that! My pieces for my own site Film Intuition were always incredibly long, I went down too many rabbit holes of research where I would go off on these tangents on history & philosophy, & just generally made the whole process much harder than it needed to be. Even though, by that point, when I was writing for other outlets that had strict word limits, I’d definitely created a formula I liked (that I actually adapted from standup comedy) to help me along, my heart really wasn’t in it anymore. I started doing things like writing a more Beat generation or stream-of-consciousness style review of like Kathryn Bigelow & Monty Montgomery’s THE LOVELESS or Todd Haynes’ THE VELVET UNDERGROUND & writing essays on Curtis Hanson’s BAD INFLUENCE, Brian De Palma’s SCARFACE, & other films to keep me invested & remind myself why I first started loving writing about movies in the first place, which is because it allows you to write about life. I was always finding out that anytime I wrote about sex or gender in particular, the pieces would strike a chord, especially if it was about masculinity so that’s mostly what I was often hired to cover. HEATHERS screenwriter Dan Waters once jokingly dubbed me a “macho beast,” for writing about men in westerns, which is funny because I can most often be found wearing very feminine floral dresses. Hilariously, this all was around the same time that I finally got approved to be a Rotten Tomatoes critic & sadly, by then I was just so over the whole thing. Whether I agree with them or not, my favorite film critics are still the ones who really go for it on a daily basis—people like Walter Chaw & Bilge Ebiri—who write these brainy, poetic personal opuses on everything & aren’t just an extra arm of the Hollywood PR machine or in it just to see their names on a poster. My steady freelance “day job” for a good five or so years was writing for the DVD Netflix blog & I would craft these extremely long pieces on character actors like David Morse & Elias Koteas where I was always amazed that anyone read them that weren’t like David Morse & Elias Koteas (& their loved ones). One thing I’ve learned is that when you’re passionate about something, your passion shines through & it attracts others who feel the same way. Anyway, by the time I started the show, I was really excited by the idea of doing something new. Unfortunately, because I’m also a total nerd, I didn’t know how to just trust that I could speak intelligently off the cuff so I wrote full scripts for my sections of the show for those first few years. Back then, introductions went on for minutes, some of the questions were too convoluted, & I really made an effort to sum up each film or deliver a few facts about each before we dove in & it was extremely time-intensive, not to mention expensive. I was buying film books on figures we discussed & went so overboard that I feel like the show finally got into its rhythm more in the third season or so. I’m really proud of some of those well-researched conversations, especially when I had guests like Tomris Laffly on to discuss James Cameron or Adam Nayman on Gene Tierney or James Urbaniak on Faye Dunaway & their own enthusiasm & need to research had us all hitting the books. However, because I’m not just doing like 10 shows a year & every episode was starting to be like that, I gradually got more confident in my ability to just freestyle, be prepared in terms of research but not use scripts too much, & have more natural conversations that I hope people still enjoy.
FR: Your guests include authors, actors, and filmmakers. I personally believe, in the year 2025, and for some time now, that film is more than likely still the most popular way to connect through art. Not everyone likes reading (shame), not everyone likes museums, I’ve even met people who don’t like music, but everyone loves movies, even if they disagree with personal favorites. Why do you think movies have such a huge impact on people?
JJ: Film is the perfect blend of all of the other art forms from words to the visual arts (cinematography, costuming, production design) to music to beyond. Like all of the rest, it aims to tell us something about humanity but because it’s the product of so many creative souls & serves as a reflection of life or window into people & places we might never experience otherwise (& may not want to) there’s something magical, fulfilling, thrilling, & wholeheartedly nourishing about the medium. Roger Ebert called film “a machine that generates empathy,” Martin Scorsese referred to it as spiritual or his church, & I think both are true. As someone who grew up with a genetic disorder & chronic pain, film was my escape as a child & I find it interesting when so many filmmakers talk about how cinema served the same purpose for them as sick kids too, like Scorsese & Francis Ford Coppola.
FR: Often certain film roles and certain films can change as we get older. Maybe ten years ago William H. Macy played your favorite role, but today he’s been knocked down a few pegs by another performance. In the last handful of years, say since 2000, for you, who have given the strongest performances that ring true even today?
JJ: Oh, this is so hard! There are so, so, many incredible performances & I don’t really rank actors. Since 2000, off the top of my head, I’d include Javier Bardem in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, Leonardo DiCaprio in THE DEPARTED, Daniel Day-Lewis in THERE WILL BE BLOOD, Heath Ledger in BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, Frances McDormand in THREE BILLBOARDS…, Charlize Theron in MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, Cate Blanchett in TÁR, & Julia Roberts in ERIN BROCKOVICH. There are several hundred more to list, haha.
FR: Of all the deep dives you do on WATCH WITH JEN, what shows have been your favorites? Maybe you changed your mind about a film, or learned something new that perhaps a guest noticed?
JJ: Oh, wow, I just hit Episode 250 this season so I know I’m going to forget a ton because I have so many favorites. Conversations with my friend Kate Hagen & people like Allison Anders, Griffin Dunne & Amy Robinson, Nancy Savoca & Richard Guay, & bringing on a few buddies to chat with Scott Ryan (not for a film but his show MR. INBETWEEN) have been amazing. Speaking of TV, I did deep dives on SUCCESSION & THE AMERICANS with Roxana Hadadi that I loved, HALT & CATCH FIRE co-creator Chris Cantwell was so open & generous with his time & recollections as well. As for film, I did a three part series on Dennis Hopper featuring over a dozen guests & 30 years of movies that I loved, I really enjoyed deep dives on Hal Ashby with Duncan Birmingham, Stanley Kubrick with Bilge Ebiri, Paul Schrader with Megan Abbott, John Cassavetes with Robert Bellissimo, & so many more. Anytime I learn something new or get challenged to seek out new films, it’s great, like Scott Weinberg & Elizabeth Cantwell taught me more about horror in their episodes, I watched EXCALIBUR & gave LORD OF THE RINGS another shot for Adrian McKinty, went deep into JCVD’s filmography for Priscilla Page, Jed Ayres, & Jordan Harper, explored Michael Ritchie & Jan-Michael Vincent with Larry Karaszewski & Dan Waters, & discovered a love for Charles Laughton in the ‘30s with James Urbaniak. I also just love talking with friends so get so excited to bring on pals like William Boyle, S.A. Cosby, Rob Belushi, Blake Howard, Nikki Dolson, Sean Burns, Courtney Howard, Peter Avellino, Nell Minow, Mitchell Beaupre, Dan Mecca & Conor O’Donnell, & so, so, so many more.
FR: What I really like about your show, and from your writing, is how much you love films, and how passionately you can write about a film that strikes a chord with you. How did that develop? Did you have parents or friends, maybe grandparents, who handed you a love for movies, or was it something you developed for yourself?
JJ: I remember loving movies as a young girl. The one & only time I ever got into trouble at school was for talking about movies during quiet time in second grade so I had to write my name on the board & it was so humiliating! Maybe that’s when I learned it was better to write about movies? My parents loved cinema—their first date was to see JEREMIAH JOHNSON so I joke that Sydney Pollack & Robert Redford are my second & third dad because they created a movie so good that it gave my parents something to talk about & earned my dad a second date. My mom worked in a library when I was little & would bring home videos all of the time & my dad would just play everything so I saw like DIE HARD when I was 8 years old (& had nightmares about Alan Rickman & bearded men for years) & PLATOON around the same age. I was that weirdo whose first film crush was on Robert De Niro in MIDNIGHT RUN around the same time that everyone else my age were all about the guys from BEVERLY HILLS 90210. Not too many kids in 4th or 5th grade got excited to ID character actors like Willem Dafoe, Forest Whitaker, & Joe Mantegna in movies but I did. I was lucky that by the time I was diagnosed with Scoliosis & my chronic spine pain started at 11, I’d already fallen in love with writing about movies & screenwriting so I didn’t have to give up a passion for distance running or soccer or something. I was always very content to spend my time watching movies, hitting the video store, & theater with friends. Parents enjoyed having me babysit because I’d always tell them what to go see after dinner. I was basically 10 going on 40.
FR: As I mentioned above, you write passionately about movies that strike a chord. One such piece I adored is when you wrote about Sean Baker’s ANORA, a film I personally loved. The words you used really hit me in the heart strings, so much, in fact, I had to reshare it in several places on social media. Do you think that streaming and the dying theater industry is missing out on those moments when movies can make us feel that passionately? When Baker won his award he talked about how people need to be in the theater again, and I agree with him, it’s a place to share those passions on a much larger screen.
JJ: Thank you so much for the kind words. I shared something really personal about heartbreak in that ANORA essay & was blown away by how many men reached out privately & told me that it moved them or made them cry, which wasn’t my intent at all, but sometimes when you reveal how a film hit you at a certain point in your life, it makes others see it that way as well. I agree with you; I think that streaming makes the experience so much less special. The quality of so many of these movies being churned out now for at-home viewing is pretty abysmal. Companies just need two stars & a poster, they already have your money for the subscription, the plots are dumbed down so it’s second screen entertainment because most viewers are watching while focusing on their phones, the lighting is terrible, special effects & CG make it look like a video game, & as my friend Jordan Harper likes to say, year after year, every movie made before 2000 just gets retroactively better and better by comparison. One of the reasons I love going to Los Angeles so much is because they have an incredible repertory theater scene. I’ve scheduled trips around when movies are playing at the Academy Museum, the American Cinematheque, & more but I learned that I actually don’t have to. Anytime you’re there, you’ll likely find at least 2-3 movies per day that you’d love to see on the big screen. Yet as much as I love the movie experience in that city, I do have to say that the audience—often younger viewers who have never seen these movies before—can potentially ruin the film by laughing at literally every single thing that an actor does in a scene that they find “cringe” or “uncool.” Annoyingly, that’s almost everything. I crossed off a bucket list item of seeing TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. in L.A. & while I’m so grateful to have experienced that with my friend Courtney Howard & her husband in the gorgeous palace of The Egyptian where the car chase sequence really came to life, it was disappointing to see how many viewers treated it like a comedy, cracking up whenever William Petersen poses or acts arrogant, which is completely befitting of his cock of the walk character. So I guess this is my way of saying, yes, by all means, I want more good movies made for the big screen like ANORA, which prove that indie filmmaking from the heart is alive & well, & I love rep screenings, but man, audiences really need to think about the fact that they’re at a public event & not to try to steal focus or act cooler than this humanistic medium we all love. It’s supposed to unite us & we need that right now.
FR: A person walks up to you that has never seen a movie before, and they ask you for recommendations. What are Jen’s five favorite go-to movies from any time or era of films?
JJ: Ooh, I often get a variation of this now working at Poisoned Pen Bookstore where people ask for a book recommendation with very little to go on. I always try to tailor it to things they enjoy, any hobbies, or their profession, etc. In this case, I’d probably just go with 5 of my faves like THE GODFATHER, VERTIGO, MODERN TIMES, SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN, & THREE COLORS: RED.
FR: Where do you see WATCH WITH JEN headed in the next few years? Or maybe, perhaps, where you see it? Talk a little about future movie writing, if any, too?
JJ: I think I’ll just keep taking it season by season. I’m realizing that it’s good to take little breaks throughout the year to recharge rather than record so many episodes that they start to blur together. I like to give people a little escape from the outside world yet subtly comment on whatever is going on like talking to the brilliant SESAME STREET director & puppeteer Noel MacNeal to tie in to the anniversary of SESAME STREET at a time when the show lost its home at HBO Max, record a two-episode dozen guest love letter to L.A. Movies after the fires happened, etc. I’ve started to record short supplemental videos where I make recommendations of overlooked movies I think people should check out on my Patreon & Instagram, etc. I’ll probably do more of that. It’d be awesome to keep having heartfelt conversations with people who you don’t often hear on film podcasts, which I dig. Last year, I was invited to introduce a film on behalf of the pod at the American Cinematheque in L.A. so I’d love to do more of that. As far as writing goes, I really adore personal film essays. In addition to the one on ANORA, last year, I wrote about FIVE EASY PIECES, YOU CAN COUNT ON ME, & THIEF for my site, plus HOMICIDE & BOTTLE ROCKET for hire. I play those by ear & write when I’m passionate & have the time. I’ve been approached by publishers about writing a film book but I honestly don’t know that I have a topic in mind. I kind of want to devote more time back to fiction. Ironically, all of my big writing awards were for fiction & screenwriting & I miss that. I’m going to play with fiction a little during Watch With Jen’s brief summer hiatus.
FR: There have been multiple eras of movies throughout time: Silent, Golden era, etc. What is your favorite era, maybe decade, of movies? Also, on the flipside, do you have guilty pleasure films? If so, what?
JJ: It’s incredibly predictable but the 1970s is my favorite era for cinema. I don’t believe in guilty pleasure movies; I’m fine with being uncool or cringe. I like what I like & everyone sees a film differently, which is awesome! Let’s all be earnest & uncool, haha. I was once referred to as a Cameron Crowe character & I took it as a compliment.
BONUS:
FR: You are having a big get-together at your house to screen Jen’s top three films of all time, and you can invite five actors, dead or alive, to watch and eat with you. Who do you invite? And what food are you ordering?
JJ: Mighty hard question! Wow. I’m one of those people who’d rather not meet the actors I admire because they’re just people & I love the magic act so much that I don’t want to ruin it by knowing who they are offscreen, but I’ll ignore that here. So again, off the top of my head, I’ll invite Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson, Natalie Wood, & Jack Lemmon… & then hope they’d like to be on the podcast too! I’m going with pizza because everyone likes pizza!
